Very recently it was common to hear people ask, with a genuine puzzlement, what had happened to the prospect of a mildly centrist, progressive, pro-European political force. The December 2019 election has shattered that possibility, perhaps for ever. The Blairites in the Labour Party are a tiny, uninfluential rump. Their vocal media cheerleaders are an anachronism. The Europhile progressives who quit their parties have been everywhere rejected, not least because of Britain’s brutal first-past-the-post voting system. The Liberal Democrats have been decapitated.
But beyond the current lack of individual leaders, there is a yawning gap of vision.